BOULOGNE TO AMIENS
perhaps—if one remembers Rheims and Bourges; but if, setting aside such kindred associations, one surrenders one's self uncritically to the total impression produced, if one lets the fortunate accidents of time and weather count for their full value in that total—for Amiens remains mercifully unscrubbed, and its armies of saints have taken on the richest patina that northern stone can acquire—if one views the thing, in short, partly as a symbol and partly as a "work of nature" (which all ancient monuments by grace of time become), then the front of Amiens is surely one of the most splendid spectacles that Gothic art can show.
On the symbolic side especially it would be tempting to linger; so strongly does the contemplation of the great cathedrals fortify the conviction that their chief value, to this later age, is not so much æsthetic as moral. The world will doubtless always divide itself into two orders of mind: that which sees in past expressions of faith, political, religious or intellectual, only the bonds cast off by the spirit of man in its long invincible struggle for "more light"; and that which, while moved by the
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